For years, EFF has been warning that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be used to chill speech, particularly security research, because legitimate researchers will be afraid to publish their results lest they be accused of circumventing a technological protection measure. We've also been concerned that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could be abused to try to make alleged contract violations into crimes.

Viacom’s appeal of the district court’s decision in Viacom v. YouTube is well underway, and now the amicus briefs supporting Viacom have been filed as well. The arguments in Viacom’s opening brief largely rehash many of the same arguments Viacom madeunsuccessfullythe first time around: Generalized awareness of some infringing content, and failure to take down such unidentified content, disqualifies a service provider from the DMCA’s safe harbors; YouTube’s compliance with the DMCA proves its DMCA-disqualifying ability to control the infringing activity on its network; DMCA protection for YouTube’s “storage” of uploaded content does not include the display of the content on the site; and so on.

The Ninth Circuit today issued its decision in the second of a trio of cases that raise the critical legal question of whether "magic words" in a end-user license agreement (EULA) slapped onto a consumer product can turn buyers (or gift recipients) into mere licensees, rather than owners. Following its previous ruling in the first of these cases, Vernor v. Autodesk, the court today said yes  but there’s a twist.